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That’s a fair point I considered including but it’s easy to get lost in the weeds here so I opted for an overly simplistic description. Ultimately what I am tr

That’s a fair point I considered including but it’s easy to get lost in the weeds here so I opted for an overly simplistic description. Ultimately what I am trying to say is the household income now required for many is too high and often unobtainable without 2 full time incomes outside the home (and often that’s not enough). That’s not sustainable if we don’t want people offloading all their parenting outside their home. The one working at home (domestic tasks and misc.) one working outside the home (direct income) model is basically impossible now for most people.

nemomarx 8d ago
what economic program or change would you like to fix this?
- Forgeties79 8d ago
  I didn’t answer the first time you asked because it strikes me as somewhat unproductive and frankly whenever people ask questions like this it’s usually bait, but I’ll assume good faith here. I am not an expert on this subject, I am not proposing changes and mostly just saying what I observe/my opinion on this issue. This is also a US-centric take so bear that in mind. If I must voice a solution or something: Top of mind, in no particular order, is we need to talk about PTO being more universal (and not just a measly 10-20 work days a year or so) and, more importantly, we need to crack down on exploitative labor practices that lead to low incomes/too few working hours, compounded by (particularly in the shift work world) demands that people say “yes” to coming in to work at a moment’s notice. Generally speaking we need more flexibility for families, instead of the current model where we basically demand people burn their PTO (or just lose their job) for basic childcare reasons (sick, early dismissal from school, etc). This is all really dancing around the core issue though, which is that, despite our rhetoric about strong nuclear families, we’re culturally and economically hostile to families. Particularly those with young children. The support we offer is inadequate and many workplaces punish people for caring for their kids during work hours even when it isn’t really a choice. And when we talk about the cost or difficulty people often respond with “well, you shouldn’t have had kids. You’re irresponsible.” That’s just ridiculous when you think about it. We can’t say we want people to have families and then structure our society in a way that creates unnecessary barriers. Especially when those barriers depend on assumptions like “kids can’t demand anything during work hours.” I understand it’s easy to complain and offer no solutions, but I feel like what I’m doing is a little more nuanced than that. I don’t know what the answer is but I know what we are doing is not working and needs to be interrogated. That’s often the point of discussion after all - working out a possible solution. What do you propose we do?
  - nemomarx 8d ago
    That's basically all stuff I support for it. I also think socially something about extended families would be good - grandparents watching kids is good for cohesion and lightens burdens etc. I also think job hopping is probably related? think of the burden of having to move so often with the housing market and how it might compound things. But cynically I really doubt we're ready to support and fund any of these kind of changes basically. The best anyone offers is a little more maternity leave (paternity if you're being cool) and some tax or economic incentives to try and reduce daycare costs. Which will not holistically solve anything. Also giving up on WFH probably really hurt us here - that could have helped with housing substantially.
    - Forgeties79 8d ago
      WFH was amazing. I’m now in a hybrid environment and i just want to wfh. It made parenting way, way easier.
  - bluGill 8d ago
    I propose we be very slow and careful because everything I've seen anyone come up with has some unexpected unintended consequence. Some of them are absolutely awful and worse than the current situation. Others are on balance a good compromise. Since these are unknown unknowns, we can't really effectively debate them right now and so all we can do is be very careful (because there are bad consequences that are predictable as well), very slow, and every time we make a change, watch to see what the result is and be ready to undo it if it's worse than the current situation. Just to make it even harder, I'll remind you that we don't agree on what a good or bad thing is. so even after we see results, we may have a lot of hard debate on if this is actually a good compromise.
    - Forgeties79 8d ago
      See this is the rub for me: we only like to “move fast and break things” in this country when there are promises of a lucrative IPO. I’m not saying we need to blitz, but it’s amazing how we always have to exercise extreme caution when talking about social goods. And even that doesn’t work, because with the current state of politics you can’t even get this stuff done at the municipal level. Look at Mamdani. Whether you like him or not, he is actually trying some of the ideas in a granular way. And he is being crucified for it on the right regardless of the initiative and before we see the results. When someone disagrees with something here, they are suddenly convinced it absolutely cannot work and you have to fight an incredibly uphill battle to even try it. And throughout that testing phase they will do everything in their power to dismantle it. This is used so often but it’s true. Could you imagine proposing the idea of public libraries today? We literally know the benefits. It is clearly a sound investment, and yet…
jimbokun 8d ago
Why was economic productivity high enough to allow single income families in the 1950s but not today?
- bluGill 8d ago
  I know many couples today living on one income so the other can raise the kids. They are a tiny minority but you can find them all over. They just have to make life style sacrafices that most are not willing for.
  - ndriscoll 8d ago
    It's not a tiny minority; at least in the US, ~1/4 mothers stay at home, or for mothers with pre-school children, it's ~1/3. It's actually quite normal outside of maybe certain urban professional circles, and spans low to high income.
    - Forgeties79 8d ago
      I’m actually familiar with the 31% statistic and a very important wrinkle to that figure is it includes people on disabilities, retired, unemployed but want to be employed, etc. so we really can’t say “1/3rd of Americans live an ok to comfortable life on one income.” Ultimately, 69% (more really) don’t.

nemomarx 8d ago

what economic program or change would you like to fix this?

Forgeties79 8d ago
I didn’t answer the first time you asked because it strikes me as somewhat unproductive and frankly whenever people ask questions like this it’s usually bait, but I’ll assume good faith here. I am not an expert on this subject, I am not proposing changes and mostly just saying what I observe/my opinion on this issue. This is also a US-centric take so bear that in mind. If I must voice a solution or something: Top of mind, in no particular order, is we need to talk about PTO being more universal (and not just a measly 10-20 work days a year or so) and, more importantly, we need to crack down on exploitative labor practices that lead to low incomes/too few working hours, compounded by (particularly in the shift work world) demands that people say “yes” to coming in to work at a moment’s notice. Generally speaking we need more flexibility for families, instead of the current model where we basically demand people burn their PTO (or just lose their job) for basic childcare reasons (sick, early dismissal from school, etc). This is all really dancing around the core issue though, which is that, despite our rhetoric about strong nuclear families, we’re culturally and economically hostile to families. Particularly those with young children. The support we offer is inadequate and many workplaces punish people for caring for their kids during work hours even when it isn’t really a choice. And when we talk about the cost or difficulty people often respond with “well, you shouldn’t have had kids. You’re irresponsible.” That’s just ridiculous when you think about it. We can’t say we want people to have families and then structure our society in a way that creates unnecessary barriers. Especially when those barriers depend on assumptions like “kids can’t demand anything during work hours.” I understand it’s easy to complain and offer no solutions, but I feel like what I’m doing is a little more nuanced than that. I don’t know what the answer is but I know what we are doing is not working and needs to be interrogated. That’s often the point of discussion after all - working out a possible solution. What do you propose we do?
- nemomarx 8d ago
  That's basically all stuff I support for it. I also think socially something about extended families would be good - grandparents watching kids is good for cohesion and lightens burdens etc. I also think job hopping is probably related? think of the burden of having to move so often with the housing market and how it might compound things. But cynically I really doubt we're ready to support and fund any of these kind of changes basically. The best anyone offers is a little more maternity leave (paternity if you're being cool) and some tax or economic incentives to try and reduce daycare costs. Which will not holistically solve anything. Also giving up on WFH probably really hurt us here - that could have helped with housing substantially.
  - Forgeties79 8d ago
    WFH was amazing. I’m now in a hybrid environment and i just want to wfh. It made parenting way, way easier.
- bluGill 8d ago
  I propose we be very slow and careful because everything I've seen anyone come up with has some unexpected unintended consequence. Some of them are absolutely awful and worse than the current situation. Others are on balance a good compromise. Since these are unknown unknowns, we can't really effectively debate them right now and so all we can do is be very careful (because there are bad consequences that are predictable as well), very slow, and every time we make a change, watch to see what the result is and be ready to undo it if it's worse than the current situation. Just to make it even harder, I'll remind you that we don't agree on what a good or bad thing is. so even after we see results, we may have a lot of hard debate on if this is actually a good compromise.
  - Forgeties79 8d ago
    See this is the rub for me: we only like to “move fast and break things” in this country when there are promises of a lucrative IPO. I’m not saying we need to blitz, but it’s amazing how we always have to exercise extreme caution when talking about social goods. And even that doesn’t work, because with the current state of politics you can’t even get this stuff done at the municipal level. Look at Mamdani. Whether you like him or not, he is actually trying some of the ideas in a granular way. And he is being crucified for it on the right regardless of the initiative and before we see the results. When someone disagrees with something here, they are suddenly convinced it absolutely cannot work and you have to fight an incredibly uphill battle to even try it. And throughout that testing phase they will do everything in their power to dismantle it. This is used so often but it’s true. Could you imagine proposing the idea of public libraries today? We literally know the benefits. It is clearly a sound investment, and yet…

jimbokun 8d ago

Why was economic productivity high enough to allow single income families in the 1950s but not today?

bluGill 8d ago
I know many couples today living on one income so the other can raise the kids. They are a tiny minority but you can find them all over. They just have to make life style sacrafices that most are not willing for.
- ndriscoll 8d ago
  It's not a tiny minority; at least in the US, ~1/4 mothers stay at home, or for mothers with pre-school children, it's ~1/3. It's actually quite normal outside of maybe certain urban professional circles, and spans low to high income.
  - Forgeties79 8d ago
    I’m actually familiar with the 31% statistic and a very important wrinkle to that figure is it includes people on disabilities, retired, unemployed but want to be employed, etc. so we really can’t say “1/3rd of Americans live an ok to comfortable life on one income.” Ultimately, 69% (more really) don’t.